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In order to provide additional and enhanced credit card protection for consumers, credit card companies will soon implement new rules that will change the way credit and debit card transactions will be processed. All major credit card companies are issuing new EMV (Europay, Mastercard and Visa) cards or “smart cards” that contain embedded microchips that provide transaction security features and other capabilities not possible with current, traditional, magnetic stripe cards. (Note: Smart cards are not new. They have been around a long time and most of the world has already migrated to EMV technology. The United States is one of...

The data breach that struck our company spotlighted the sophistication of criminal hacker networks operating across the globe. We know the attack created significant concerns for millions of customers. We will learn from this incident and we will work to make Target, and the wider business community, more secure in the future. One step American businesses could now take that would dramatically improve the security of all credit and debit cards: adoption of chip-enabled smartcards. The technology is already widely used throughout the world. For many reasons, the United States has been slow to embrace the technology at home. We...

Scofflaws could hack the smart cards that access electronic parking meters in large cities around the United States, researchers are finding. The smart cards pay for parking spots, and their programming could be easily changed to obtain unlimited free parking. It took researcher Joe Grand only three days to design an attack on the smart cards. The researchers examined the meters used in San Francisco, California, but the same and similar electronic meters are being installed in cities around the world. "It wasn't technically complicated and the fact that I can do it in three days means that other people...

CHICAGO, April 1 (UPI) -- Very soon, international travelers will be able to breeze through customs checkpoints using passports outfitted with contactless smart-cards, experts told UPI's Wireless World. With the new technology, travelers will present their passports to customs agents, who simply will swipe them across a card reader, just as checkout clerks run bags of potato chips over a laser scanner at a grocery store. Likewise, as part of a directive signed by President George W. Bush, the Department of Homeland Security is planning to issue smart-card identification badges that will include digital images of fingerprints. The smart-cards, which...

WASHINGTON, Nov. 25 - The State Department will soon begin issuing passports that carry information about the traveler in a computer chip embedded in the cardboard cover as well as on its printed pages. Privacy advocates say the new format - developed in response to security concerns after the Sept. 11 attacks - will be vulnerable to electronic snooping by anyone within several feet, a practice called skimming. Internal State Department documents, obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union under the Freedom of Information Act, show that Canada, Germany and Britain have raised the same concern. "This is like putting...

<p>Michael Berry prowled the streets of South Central Los Angeles in a rented silver Volvo, searching for a clue. He turned onto a residential street called 12th Avenue, peered at each home and then slowed the car almost to a stop. His heart fluttered.</p> <p>Off to his left was the address that had obsessed him for months. He saw a well-tended bungalow with crisp green grass. Watering the lawn was a man covered in tattoos and wearing a sleeveless undershirt and aviator sunglasses, who watched closely as Berry drove by. "Oh crap, I didn't do this right," Berry muttered to himself, gripping the steering wheel a little tighter and trying not to stare back.</p>

Demonstration Completed On Smart Cards To Reduce Underage Drinking And Driving Under a cooperative agreement, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), the Traffic Injury Research Foundation (TIRF) of Ontario, Canada, and the Bureau of Alcohol Education of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania conducted a demonstration and evaluation of the use of smart card technology to prevent the selling of alcohol to underage persons. The Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board enlisted CommStar, Inc. to develop the hardware and software for a simple, efficient, and reliable system for verifying the age of a customer, as well as the authenticity of the identification. Providing retailers...

Visa, Philips team to promote 'contactless' credit card PARIS — Visa International and Royal Philips Electronics have unveiled an exclusive partnership agreement under which the two companies will jointly develop and promote the application of contactless chip technology for payment transactions. The partners said they share a common vision for widespread deployment of contactless chip technology on various consumer devices. Using the technology, consumers could easily make payments to purchase goods or unlock services simply by waving a credit card equipped with a contactless interface at a reader. "We've been talking about the similar vision, but coming from two...

"Setec, a leading smart card solution provider, will deliver Finnish national ID and electronic ID cards in 2003–2006. The acquirers are National Population Register Centre and the Ministry of Internal Affairs. In addition, Setec will deliver electronic ID organization cards for National Population Register Centre, who will offer them for its own customers as part of certification services. Altogether, the two deals may bring Setec volume deliveries of hundreds of thousands of cards within the next four years."[More at link.]

FAA using biometrics to enhance travel safety; smart cards to be available later to public by John Rhea BALTIMORE — The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is completing a security program that will provide all transportation workers with smart cards based on their individual biometric characteristics — and the cards will later be available to the traveling public — says Michael Brown, director of information systems security at FAA headquarters in Washington. Brown stressed that all the necessary supporting technology is readily available from commercial sources. The first prototypes were completed last month, he says, and the FAA expects to begin...